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Ask HN: How do you get work done while there is a war in Europe?

64 points by chinathrow 5y ago

Since Russia started the invasion of Ukraine, I feel sad and baffled while being glued to news sources covering the war, mostly on Twitter. How do you keep your focus on working during these times?

aww_dang 5y ago
There are things in the immediate sphere of your life which you can influence. Telescoping in on tragic events which you have no direct control over doesn't empower you or resolve the underlying tragedy. Remember that there are bad situations on every scale throughout the world, everyday. The best way to empower yourself is to tackle the things which you can change. The more empowered you are, the more agency you have to tackle tragic events. Although it is unlikely that you will be able to personally prevent wars, there are other smaller problems you can engage with.
drstewart 5y ago
I don't glue myself to the news. What's the point? Do you really need minute by minute updates of every operation or event? What actionable difference will it make?
- chinathrow 5y ago
  You're absolutely correct, it's not needed. I guess it's more like an addiction at this time I can't overcome (yet).
  - smcl 5y ago
    If it's any consolation you're not the only one. I know that it is not helpful to check news sites or scroll through twitter ... and yet it's hard to motivate myself to focus on actual work knowing what's going on.
- ianai 5y ago
  You’ve clearly never worked nor lived somewhere high on the list of places a hostile would want to destroy. When I worked in a very tall building (tallest for thousands of miles) I would keep an eye towards the news “just in case”. Right now any such place is probably on high alert regardless of whether it would seem an obvious target to randos on the internet.
  - karaterobot 5y ago
    If the OP is in Ukraine, it's a different story. They didn't say so, and it's unlikely. If they're in, for example, the United States, they do not need to be on high alert at the moment.
    - chinathrow 5y ago
      I live in Europe.
      - ianai 5y ago
        I’m guessing learning about your local bomb alerting system might help. That way you realize it’s not just you.
  - corndoge 5y ago
    Maybe they haven't, but OP didn't make that part of their statement, so responding as if they did is disingenuous. You seem to be going for the epic own rather than making an effort to take the hospitable interpretation of GP's statement.
  - SapporoChris 5y ago
    I'm curious of the odds of danger while being in a very tall building on a day to day basis. Additionally, I'm wondering what sort of news alert you're looking for that would be actionable. Do you really expect a news flash that will give you adequate time to take actions. Balance all this against the time you spend looking at news daily.
    - ianai 5y ago
      Considering I worked through multiple bomb threats, a nearby active shooter, and other such things I consider it time well spent. Probably any job with a high degree of public interaction benefits from situational awareness, further.
      - 5y ago
pusewicz 5y ago
It's definitely tricky and I find myself doing the same, refreshing Reddit, BBC News, Twitter and Telegram channels. It sucks, and I bet the closer (geographically) you are to the conflict, the worse it gets. Trying to do your routine helps sometimes, but I don't think it's feasible to completely forget about what's happening.
atanasovskib 5y ago
- atanasovskib 5y ago
  - Minor49er 5y ago
    How can you be so concerned about Russia and the Ukraine, two countries privileged enough to own weapons of war, when there are children dying of starvation in Africa?
    - chinathrow 5y ago
      My ask HN was specifically about the current war. I myself (and I guess many more) care very much about other causes but this is not about that.
      - Minor49er 5y ago
        I know. I was poking fun at the bleeding-hearted comment
  - smcl 5y ago
    It reads like someone genuinely looking for answers, they're not trying to grab attention or make it seem like they're suffering as those in Ukraine are. It's a fairly natural reaction to be shocked enough by the war that it bleeds into other parts one's life, and I don't think we should mock anyone who's asking for help in good faith.
justshowpost 5y ago
Just like you did get work done when there was war in Afghanistan, Syria, …
nine_zeros 5y ago
It's ok to take a few days for your mental health and recuperation. Talk to your manager.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  I work for myself hence my time is unregulated/untracked - there is no manager :)
ratg13 5y ago
This may help you http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews
Bostonian 5y ago
The richer you are the more you can donate to assist the victims of war. So check the news only a few times a day and work hard to be in a position to help. I should follow my own advice.
- xfitm3 5y ago
  Project Dynamo has caught my eye and I donated to them. They're helping citizens evacuate and flee to other countries. It's a registered non-profit and claims to be ran by military veterans.
jtbayly 5y ago
Stop amusing yourself with stuff that you don’t actually enjoy. That’s all following Twitter “news” is. Entertainment.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  The point is, I am not doing it for my amusement - it's something else. More like a need/urge to stay in the loop. I had the same sensation when Covid hit in 2020.
  - orangepurple 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
    - chinathrow 5y ago
      I know what Fomo is, and no, it's not like that. Maybe it's more a feeling of "wanting to know first" so I can be mentally prepared when things turn to the worse. Not sure.
      - ASalazarMX 5y ago
        It seems like a vicious cycle of anxiety. Make a serious effort to limit your news consumption to maybe a few quick glances a day. If you're glued to the news, you'll notice that 90% of them are the same, so it's a more efficient use of your attention to check them 90% less. Many people, like me, fell in the trap of getting "hyperinformed" during COVID, only to find out staying on the bleeding edge of an evolving situation is like having another full-time job. Excessive infotainment only heightens anxiety.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Well, I definitely know the feeling… But if it is about preparation, then ask yourself what you can (or will) do to prepare for a worst case scenario, then middle scenario, then not so bad scenario. Take care of what you can, and tell yourself clearly that you’ve done what you need to do there’s no need to worry about it anymore.
spacemanmatt 5y ago
I can't.
shantnutiwari 5y ago
You dont mention if you live in Ukraine, or if you have relatives there. If you don't, why are you glued to the news / Twitter? Why do you need a constant stream of updates?
DiabloD3 5y ago
I am not in Europe, but American, and this war does affect me, since we are the largest member of NATO, but also the first target of Russian aggression in this weird neo-Soviet era if Russia decides to deploy nukes (a low, but non-zero, chance). I give the news 15 minutes of my time every day. Even when events like this happen, 15 minutes. I, nor you, can meaningfully change the course of events; even if we could, neither of us can tell if we would improve things or make them worse. The only people who can change this now are the Russians starting a civil war in their own country to overthrow their leader to save their brothers and sisters in Ukraine, and I wish them all luck.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  > I give the news 15 minutes of my time every day. Even when events like this happen, 15 minutes. I'll try that. Do you use pure self control for that? A timer?
  - DiabloD3 5y ago
    Mostly self control. It only takes me about 15 minutes to go through all the actual news sources I follow. HN doesn't come out of the 15 minute budget, since its all technical focused not-exactly-news; it has its own budget of sorts.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > also the first target of Russian aggression in this weird neo-Soviet era if Russia decides to deploy nukes On the contrary, you'll be the last target. Ukraine is obviously the first, the countries bordering Ukraine in the South, especially Poland are at risk, then the rest of Europe and finally the US.
- chimen 5y ago
  Romania and Poland would be the first hits. You're last.
- jltsiren 5y ago
  It's much easier to avoid thinking about the war in the US. Here it's just another tragedy in a faraway country, and you only hear about it in the news. It probably doesn't affect your daily life. The situation seems very different in Europe. The war is pretty much the only thing people are talking about on the channels I use to stay in touch with people in Finland. If I want to avoid thinking about the war, it's not enough to avoid the news. I must also avoid friends and family.
kspacewalk2 5y ago
It's not easy, doubly so for Ukrainians like me. I've decided to take hours-long breaks from touching my phone or using my browser for anything but work. I like to take impromptu 5 minute breaks while working if I'm stuck or frustrated with something. Have to end that and become more disciplined, otherwise the news and the sadness and the fury just consumes me. Thursday and Friday were write-offs, I'm determined to make today different.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  > Thursday and Friday were write-offs, I'm determined to make today different. I feel very much the same and I wish you well.
- anelson 5y ago
  My situation exactly. I’m American but I live in Kyiv, I was lucky to get out a few days before the invasion but my life, my team, and my property are still there. I try to focus on helping the guys still there find safety and arrange lodgings, but the draw of doomscrolling is ever present. Fortunately I’ve noticed that I can’t focus on the horrible reality of this war and also on coding or reviewing PRs or debugging some code. If I can focus on a concrete task my mood improves for as long as I can hold the focus. Also as usual, physical activity helps. I landed in Tbilisi with just a suitcase and didn’t have time to find a gym or set up a routine, but even just walking up the steep hills in the city improves my mood. Don’t underestimate the positive effect this has on the mental state. This war is not going away soon and my people aren’t going to be out of danger any time soon, so it’s critical to find a way to focus on what needs to be done and not waste time and energy fretting. Easy to say, not so easy to do.
Sevii 5y ago
Turn off all news and twitter during work hours.
paskozdilar 5y ago
It is rational to ignore information about things we cannot affect. Your energy is much better used in other ways.
- dylan604 5y ago
  It's also rational to be affected by things we cannot affect as well though. Your comment could be interpetted as saying that it is irrational to not ignore these things. Unfortunately, platitudes are not always the answer.
  - paskozdilar 5y ago
    >It's also rational to be affected by things we cannot affect as well though. It's natural to be affected by things we cannot affect, but it is not rational. A rational agent or rational being is a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information.[0] Thus, an agent that spends energy analyzing impossible scenarions cannot be rational. >Your comment could be interpetted as saying that it is irrational to not ignore these things. That would be a valid interpretation of my comment.
endtime 5y ago
I have friends and family in Israel. I'm used to working while missiles are flying.
ianai 5y ago
If it’s just twitter then just keep a smallish window up somewhere with whatever the most trending thing is. If there’s a word bubble that kinda thing. Anything really pressing will rise on those fast enough. Otherwise carve out time for “just work” and “breaks to see what’s going on in the world.”
omgmajk 5y ago
It's an addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling
- chinathrow 5y ago
  I've heard of the term but never read up its definition, thank you, that's it: "Doomscrolling, the compulsion to engross oneself in negative news, may be the result of an evolutionary mechanism where humans are “wired to screen for and anticipate danger”. The anticipation bit made it clear. So now is the question: how to over come it? Looks like I need a full blown news detox.
  - scruple 5y ago
    I'm no longer a religious person but I was raised a Presbyterian Christian. It was very common to hear the adults around me recite the Serenity Prayer when I was younger. I think there is a lot of wisdom there. I don't know if that will help you but it has helped me.
  - omgmajk 5y ago
    I just stopped reading the news pretty much. It takes like a week or two and then you won't even notice. Look at it this way, if anything super important happens you will most likely see it on the front page here or on the front page of Reddit. But with HN and Reddit you don't get the bulk that is made to fill the page on a news site.
Trasmatta 5y ago
I'm struggling with this too. I find that on any given day, once the "seal is opened" on the news, so to speak, it's very hard to close it. As soon as I start reading and doomscrolling, it becomes an incredible compulsion that's hard to break myself away from. But if I can just pull myself away from it for about an hour, the compulsion starts to fade. So I'm trying to restrict my news reading to 15-30 minutes once per day. That fulfills the urge to "be informed", while not endlessly scrolling through millions of uninformed opinions.
StanislavPetrov 5y ago
How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine. Unfortunately it is because "new sources" generate your outrage and decide what you are going to focus on. This is not to say what's happening in Ukraine isn't a tragedy or that we all shouldn't be concerned, but it is to say that there are tragedies and wars raging around the world all the time that are far worse than what is happening in Ukraine today. Many are familiar with Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" which details exactly this issue. If you are obsessed with Russia's war on Ukraine and barely give a passing thought to the much more deadly and horrific Saudi/US war on Yemen you ought to consider why exactly that is.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- chinathrow 5y ago
  > How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine. My question was about recent events - I am not diminishing any other wars ever stated, at all. Disclosure: I am a pacifist.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  None of those tragedies as you call them had the direct potential to turn nuclear based on the threats of one of the parties involved.
- adventured 5y ago
  > How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine. Your entire premise is fraudulent: of course all people do not matter to all people equally the same. Family, tribe, city, state, nation, culture, ethnicity, race, class, religion. People choose to care about other people based on such qualifications as a matter of routine throughout all of history, it is normal and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you're in Britain and your family is in Ukraine, of course you're going to care more about what's going on in Ukraine than what is going on in Yemen. If you're second or third generation Ukrainian in the US, of course you're likely to care a lot more about what's going on in Ukraine than in Yemen. If you culturally relate to Ukrainians far more than you culturally relate to people in Yemen, of course you're going to be drawn to what's going on in Europe more than in Yemen. That's perfectly normal and entirely moral. You don't have to care about every person on the planet equally, and any claim to the contrary is espousing not only an immoral philosophy but an impossible one: you couldn't follow such a value system even if you tried. Such an impossible value system is only built to drown people in guilt and control, it serves no other purpose.
monkeybutton 5y ago
Find somewhere public to work. Its a lot harder to sit unproductively doomscrolling while sitting in a café with other people around. Its not as productive as a regular day at home but its better than nothing. At least for me anyways.
brianmcc 5y ago
You're not alone, and there's nothing wrong with that kind of response, so don't give yourself a hard time for it. These are shocking events with global ramifications as well as obviously the awful localised impact within Ukraine.
nonameiguess 5y ago
I had some issues with a sort of generalized need to frequently check updates like this in the past. Maybe a noteworthy world event, maybe just national signing day for some NCAA sport or a pro draft, an argument on some phpBB forum. Breaking it was largely a matter of not having access. I was in the Army a while and often not engaged in work where you can shift attention all that easily or safely. Then when I got out, I was doing mostly classified work from a SCIF where I had no Internet access at my primary workstation. Just having that sort of small effort barrier was enough. I lived without a constant info dump update feed scrawling through my eyeballs for many years and realized it made no difference and I did not need that. It's not that I now watch or read no news ever, but infrequently, mostly on weekends. I still kind of care about sports but not nearly as much. Hacker News is the only site I still visit where I can comment and receive feedback, but I make no effort whatsoever to see if anyone has replied to try and reply back. If you find you can't do it through sheer willpower alone, there are plenty of ways to more or less simulate an airgap. Various browser extensions can block sites during work hours. If you find yourself turning it off all the time, you can make it harder on yourself by keeping a set of firewall rules at your router or DNS rules at a filtering provider that takes more than a click or two to turn off. If you're using company issued workstations from an office and they don't block the sites you find yourself wasting time on and don't allow you to install extensions or configure your own DNS, those won't work. A less drastic possibility is listening to news via radio as a constant background noise type of thing, or possibly even a television feed. At least that way you can still work while receiving updates. It should be less addictive since it's non-interactive and the feed is not algorithmically curated to be maximally addictive to you personally.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  > If you find yourself turning it off all the time, you can make it harder on yourself by keeping a set of firewall rules at your router or DNS rules at a filtering provider that takes more than a click or two to turn off. I tried that wiht my hosts file (/etc/hosts) and failed since it's a password and a comment character to enable the site back on. I do not control the firewall on the WiFi where I have my work setup.
adventured 5y ago
I just haven't been trying too hard on the work side. It's not that important. I knowingly allow my focus to regularly break, I don't care about that. I have friends in Ukraine and I'm glued to the news. I check it constantly.
colechristensen 5y ago
Why? Wars go on every day, people suffer every day, it doesn't benefit you or them to obsessively watch. I'd get it for people who live in or have close connections with the affected area, but knowing every update when you're on the other side of the world? What's the benefit? Keeping up with the general situation, sure, but up to the minute all day watching... I don't get the point or the motivation besides which is ultimately entertainment, and not good entertainment. Don't you get bored with news sources? CNN just repeats itself all day.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  How many wars involve the possibility of WW3 or nuclear engagements? This ones a bit different.
flyinglizard 5y ago
You stop exposing yourself to news which most likely won’t affect you in any way, and you remember that if everyone stopped doing what they do and just sat there scared of Putin, it’d be his victory anyway.
MrDresden 5y ago
Seeing the Ukranians on my team log in for work (even though they have been told there is no expectation to do so given the situation, but saying they do so for the distraction it offers them) simply emboldens my already considerable respect for them. If they can work from within an active war zone (Kyiv) I can do so from the comfort of my northern european couch.
Swizec 5y ago
As an eastern(-ish) European[1] with fuzzy memories of experiencing a small war as a ~4 year old kid, this has been extremely hard to watch. Even though I live in USA now, I don’t remember ever being this affected by a news cycle. Wednesday evening when the news of totally-not-invasion first broke was tough. Thursday was basically a write off. Friday was luckily so busy I didn’t have time for interneting. Ultimately what worked was to remind myself all this is outside the sphere of my influence, there’s nothing actionable I can do, and following minute-by-minute news is just giving someone else free reign of my mind. Don’t need people’s hot takes and armchair analysis. A daily balanced report from a proper journalist outfit is enough. edit: What has also helped was deciding early on that should this go beyond Ukraine into the rest of Europe, I’m flying my family out immediately. There’s only 918 miles by road between Kyiv and where my family lives. Making that decision in advance and with clear pull-the-trigger criteria makes it easier to stop stressing. [^1] Slovenia
zwkrt 5y ago
News of international affairs has never caused me to solve a problem or reduce an anxiety in my own life or the life of thiose around me (quite the opposite), so I do not give it much weight in my mind. Throughout the pandemic there have been genocidal actions in Ethiopia and China, Duterte in the Philippines has made an incredible number of “extrajudicial killings” and brought total tyranny on the populace, and I’m sure there have been many other atrocities of which I am unaware. I might question why you are giving so much mental weight to this conflict. I understand nukes are involved via Russia’s involvement, but this isn’t Russia’s only military action in the last number of years. Could it be that you have been primed to take this particular conflict Very Seriously by a news media which regularly downplays conflicts with more casualties and cultural significance?
time_to_smile 5y ago
Industrial civilization is already in a state of collapse, plenty of people on HN have done a great job doubling down on the "this is fine", but even prior to the Ukraine invasion, it was hard to put your head down an work for brighter future you know doesn't exist. The immediacy of the war in Ukraine is just harder for most people to ignore. But just today we got another update from the IPCC [0] confirming what many people paying attention have already known: “Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.” Key phrase there being liveable future Most people on HN don't believe climate change will be that bad, but for those paying attention we're already on a ticking clock. In 2014 I saw all of this, 2020 onward being progressively worse was something I knew was inevitable. End of the day you realize that you have to eat, pay rent, etc. so you have to work. Tech workers have had a really great luxury of possibly enjoying or even loving their day job, but that's not why people have to work. We've always lived in a kafkaesque world, tech workers have just been shielded from it. The only advice is to try to cut out the news and twitter a bit. It's mostly disinformation on there anyway, nobody really knows exactly what's happening and plenty of people have an agenda to push. Spend so more time consuming "slow" media. Read a novel, some philosophy, or just spend time listening to music. The world will be getting increasingly stressful over the years, it's a good idea to start figuring out how you are going to life in a world of loss. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/ipcc-issues-bleakest-warning-yet-impacts-climate-breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/ipcc-iss...
hprotagonist 5y ago
Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.
cellis 5y ago
Something that I’ve recently started doing is pomodoros of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks. Finding discipline to just do real work is difficult if your work isn’t well specified beforehand. So I use a few tools for this: * pen/pencil and mini wire bound notebooks. I tried using Apple notes but the phone is a source of endless distraction. I write down goals for the day, headlined by project name. When I’m done I cross them out. * befocusedpro app for pomodoros It has a pretty nice way to setup pomodoro tasks and isn’t trying to be much more than a pomodoro app. My employer uses Jira and my side projects use Trello or Apple notes. It sits on the mac menu bar and beeps when both the pomodoro and break are up. During breaks sometimes I respond to text messages or take a quick walk around but you could read news too. I write down about 5 “goals” and try to get them all done * streaks app iOS This is like GitHub history for habits. After every befocusedpro pomodoro I check the streak for e.g. ( employer pomodoro ) or ( side project pomodoro ) Finally, I put my phone in do not disturb pretty much the whole time I’m trying to accomplish my pomodoros and the only exceptions are my significant other and mom / sister. That’s it!
johncoltrane 5y ago
FYI, the war in Ukraine has been ongoing since 2014. You care more about the current developments because the media you follow care more about it. Unless you live in the region, there is nothing you can do about it and it is unlikely to have any effect on your day-to-day life, so turn off the news and focus on things you actually have leverage on. Me? I never cared about that war and I still don't, just like I don't care about any of the currently ongoing wars (Yemen, Syria, whatever). Not following the news makes life generally less unpleasant.
happynacho 5y ago
I ignore it. It isn't that hard.
sharken 5y ago
Not being Ukrainian makes it somewhat easier i think, but it's still a very troubling situation. Hopefully there are some sensible Russians who will prevent Putin from running amok. My routine consists of checking Hacker News, CNN and local media with the purpose of checking up on any new developments. One rule i try to live by is no commenting while at work. And while there is no sympathy at all for Putin, i have no problems with the Russian people, they are still very much welcome.
kaeken 5y ago
I'm treating parsing the news as an exercise in recognizing disinformation instead of just watching in horror. There's so many parties between what's actually happening and my news feed that I feel there's guaranteed to be genuine war-time propaganda showing up. I want to build the muscle required to recognize that stuff so that when the same tactics are used by/against my country later in life, I'll be practiced at calling it out. That Ghost of Kyiv story? Immediately called the clip BS since it's like Propaganda 101. Turns out the video on my timeline was from a video game. Approaching my news feed as a hostile reader takes enough effort/energy that I genuinely just get tired and put it down to do something else.
sfusato 5y ago
I limit my news intake to just the Wikipedia's "Current events" portal page [1] which provides just the right amount of worldwide current events. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events
wooque 5y ago
add this to your hosts file 0.0.0.0 twitter.com

64 points by chinathrow 5y ago

Since Russia started the invasion of Ukraine, I feel sad and baffled while being glued to news sources covering the war, mostly on Twitter. How do you keep your focus on working during these times?

aww_dang 5y ago

There are things in the immediate sphere of your life which you can influence. Telescoping in on tragic events which you have no direct control over doesn't empower you or resolve the underlying tragedy. Remember that there are bad situations on every scale throughout the world, everyday. The best way to empower yourself is to tackle the things which you can change. The more empowered you are, the more agency you have to tackle tragic events. Although it is unlikely that you will be able to personally prevent wars, there are other smaller problems you can engage with.

drstewart 5y ago

I don't glue myself to the news. What's the point? Do you really need minute by minute updates of every operation or event? What actionable difference will it make?

chinathrow 5y ago
You're absolutely correct, it's not needed. I guess it's more like an addiction at this time I can't overcome (yet).
- smcl 5y ago
  If it's any consolation you're not the only one. I know that it is not helpful to check news sites or scroll through twitter ... and yet it's hard to motivate myself to focus on actual work knowing what's going on.
ianai 5y ago
You’ve clearly never worked nor lived somewhere high on the list of places a hostile would want to destroy. When I worked in a very tall building (tallest for thousands of miles) I would keep an eye towards the news “just in case”. Right now any such place is probably on high alert regardless of whether it would seem an obvious target to randos on the internet.
- karaterobot 5y ago
  If the OP is in Ukraine, it's a different story. They didn't say so, and it's unlikely. If they're in, for example, the United States, they do not need to be on high alert at the moment.
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    I live in Europe.
    - ianai 5y ago
      I’m guessing learning about your local bomb alerting system might help. That way you realize it’s not just you.
- corndoge 5y ago
  Maybe they haven't, but OP didn't make that part of their statement, so responding as if they did is disingenuous. You seem to be going for the epic own rather than making an effort to take the hospitable interpretation of GP's statement.
- SapporoChris 5y ago
  I'm curious of the odds of danger while being in a very tall building on a day to day basis. Additionally, I'm wondering what sort of news alert you're looking for that would be actionable. Do you really expect a news flash that will give you adequate time to take actions. Balance all this against the time you spend looking at news daily.
  - ianai 5y ago
    Considering I worked through multiple bomb threats, a nearby active shooter, and other such things I consider it time well spent. Probably any job with a high degree of public interaction benefits from situational awareness, further.
    - 5y ago

pusewicz 5y ago

It's definitely tricky and I find myself doing the same, refreshing Reddit, BBC News, Twitter and Telegram channels. It sucks, and I bet the closer (geographically) you are to the conflict, the worse it gets. Trying to do your routine helps sometimes, but I don't think it's feasible to completely forget about what's happening.

atanasovskib 5y ago

atanasovskib 5y ago
- Minor49er 5y ago
  How can you be so concerned about Russia and the Ukraine, two countries privileged enough to own weapons of war, when there are children dying of starvation in Africa?
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    My ask HN was specifically about the current war. I myself (and I guess many more) care very much about other causes but this is not about that.
    - Minor49er 5y ago
      I know. I was poking fun at the bleeding-hearted comment
- smcl 5y ago
  It reads like someone genuinely looking for answers, they're not trying to grab attention or make it seem like they're suffering as those in Ukraine are. It's a fairly natural reaction to be shocked enough by the war that it bleeds into other parts one's life, and I don't think we should mock anyone who's asking for help in good faith.

justshowpost 5y ago

Just like you did get work done when there was war in Afghanistan, Syria, …

nine_zeros 5y ago

It's ok to take a few days for your mental health and recuperation. Talk to your manager.

chinathrow 5y ago
I work for myself hence my time is unregulated/untracked - there is no manager :)

ratg13 5y ago

This may help you http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/hatethenews

Bostonian 5y ago

The richer you are the more you can donate to assist the victims of war. So check the news only a few times a day and work hard to be in a position to help. I should follow my own advice.

xfitm3 5y ago
Project Dynamo has caught my eye and I donated to them. They're helping citizens evacuate and flee to other countries. It's a registered non-profit and claims to be ran by military veterans.

jtbayly 5y ago

Stop amusing yourself with stuff that you don’t actually enjoy. That’s all following Twitter “news” is. Entertainment.

chinathrow 5y ago
The point is, I am not doing it for my amusement - it's something else. More like a need/urge to stay in the loop. I had the same sensation when Covid hit in 2020.
- orangepurple 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear_of_missing_out
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    I know what Fomo is, and no, it's not like that. Maybe it's more a feeling of "wanting to know first" so I can be mentally prepared when things turn to the worse. Not sure.
    - ASalazarMX 5y ago
      It seems like a vicious cycle of anxiety. Make a serious effort to limit your news consumption to maybe a few quick glances a day. If you're glued to the news, you'll notice that 90% of them are the same, so it's a more efficient use of your attention to check them 90% less. Many people, like me, fell in the trap of getting "hyperinformed" during COVID, only to find out staying on the bleeding edge of an evolving situation is like having another full-time job. Excessive infotainment only heightens anxiety.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Well, I definitely know the feeling… But if it is about preparation, then ask yourself what you can (or will) do to prepare for a worst case scenario, then middle scenario, then not so bad scenario. Take care of what you can, and tell yourself clearly that you’ve done what you need to do there’s no need to worry about it anymore.

spacemanmatt 5y ago

I can't.

shantnutiwari 5y ago

You dont mention if you live in Ukraine, or if you have relatives there. If you don't, why are you glued to the news / Twitter? Why do you need a constant stream of updates?

DiabloD3 5y ago

I am not in Europe, but American, and this war does affect me, since we are the largest member of NATO, but also the first target of Russian aggression in this weird neo-Soviet era if Russia decides to deploy nukes (a low, but non-zero, chance). I give the news 15 minutes of my time every day. Even when events like this happen, 15 minutes. I, nor you, can meaningfully change the course of events; even if we could, neither of us can tell if we would improve things or make them worse. The only people who can change this now are the Russians starting a civil war in their own country to overthrow their leader to save their brothers and sisters in Ukraine, and I wish them all luck.

chinathrow 5y ago
> I give the news 15 minutes of my time every day. Even when events like this happen, 15 minutes. I'll try that. Do you use pure self control for that? A timer?
- DiabloD3 5y ago
  Mostly self control. It only takes me about 15 minutes to go through all the actual news sources I follow. HN doesn't come out of the 15 minute budget, since its all technical focused not-exactly-news; it has its own budget of sorts.
jacquesm 5y ago
> also the first target of Russian aggression in this weird neo-Soviet era if Russia decides to deploy nukes On the contrary, you'll be the last target. Ukraine is obviously the first, the countries bordering Ukraine in the South, especially Poland are at risk, then the rest of Europe and finally the US.
chimen 5y ago
Romania and Poland would be the first hits. You're last.
jltsiren 5y ago
It's much easier to avoid thinking about the war in the US. Here it's just another tragedy in a faraway country, and you only hear about it in the news. It probably doesn't affect your daily life. The situation seems very different in Europe. The war is pretty much the only thing people are talking about on the channels I use to stay in touch with people in Finland. If I want to avoid thinking about the war, it's not enough to avoid the news. I must also avoid friends and family.

kspacewalk2 5y ago

It's not easy, doubly so for Ukrainians like me. I've decided to take hours-long breaks from touching my phone or using my browser for anything but work. I like to take impromptu 5 minute breaks while working if I'm stuck or frustrated with something. Have to end that and become more disciplined, otherwise the news and the sadness and the fury just consumes me. Thursday and Friday were write-offs, I'm determined to make today different.

chinathrow 5y ago
> Thursday and Friday were write-offs, I'm determined to make today different. I feel very much the same and I wish you well.
anelson 5y ago
My situation exactly. I’m American but I live in Kyiv, I was lucky to get out a few days before the invasion but my life, my team, and my property are still there. I try to focus on helping the guys still there find safety and arrange lodgings, but the draw of doomscrolling is ever present. Fortunately I’ve noticed that I can’t focus on the horrible reality of this war and also on coding or reviewing PRs or debugging some code. If I can focus on a concrete task my mood improves for as long as I can hold the focus. Also as usual, physical activity helps. I landed in Tbilisi with just a suitcase and didn’t have time to find a gym or set up a routine, but even just walking up the steep hills in the city improves my mood. Don’t underestimate the positive effect this has on the mental state. This war is not going away soon and my people aren’t going to be out of danger any time soon, so it’s critical to find a way to focus on what needs to be done and not waste time and energy fretting. Easy to say, not so easy to do.

Sevii 5y ago

Turn off all news and twitter during work hours.

paskozdilar 5y ago

It is rational to ignore information about things we cannot affect. Your energy is much better used in other ways.

dylan604 5y ago
It's also rational to be affected by things we cannot affect as well though. Your comment could be interpetted as saying that it is irrational to not ignore these things. Unfortunately, platitudes are not always the answer.
- paskozdilar 5y ago
  >It's also rational to be affected by things we cannot affect as well though. It's natural to be affected by things we cannot affect, but it is not rational. A rational agent or rational being is a person or entity that always aims to perform optimal actions based on given premises and information.[0] Thus, an agent that spends energy analyzing impossible scenarions cannot be rational. >Your comment could be interpetted as saying that it is irrational to not ignore these things. That would be a valid interpretation of my comment.

endtime 5y ago

I have friends and family in Israel. I'm used to working while missiles are flying.

ianai 5y ago

If it’s just twitter then just keep a smallish window up somewhere with whatever the most trending thing is. If there’s a word bubble that kinda thing. Anything really pressing will rise on those fast enough. Otherwise carve out time for “just work” and “breaks to see what’s going on in the world.”

omgmajk 5y ago

It's an addiction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling

chinathrow 5y ago
I've heard of the term but never read up its definition, thank you, that's it: "Doomscrolling, the compulsion to engross oneself in negative news, may be the result of an evolutionary mechanism where humans are “wired to screen for and anticipate danger”. The anticipation bit made it clear. So now is the question: how to over come it? Looks like I need a full blown news detox.
- scruple 5y ago
  I'm no longer a religious person but I was raised a Presbyterian Christian. It was very common to hear the adults around me recite the Serenity Prayer when I was younger. I think there is a lot of wisdom there. I don't know if that will help you but it has helped me.
- omgmajk 5y ago
  I just stopped reading the news pretty much. It takes like a week or two and then you won't even notice. Look at it this way, if anything super important happens you will most likely see it on the front page here or on the front page of Reddit. But with HN and Reddit you don't get the bulk that is made to fill the page on a news site.

Trasmatta 5y ago

I'm struggling with this too. I find that on any given day, once the "seal is opened" on the news, so to speak, it's very hard to close it. As soon as I start reading and doomscrolling, it becomes an incredible compulsion that's hard to break myself away from. But if I can just pull myself away from it for about an hour, the compulsion starts to fade. So I'm trying to restrict my news reading to 15-30 minutes once per day. That fulfills the urge to "be informed", while not endlessly scrolling through millions of uninformed opinions.

StanislavPetrov 5y ago

How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine. Unfortunately it is because "new sources" generate your outrage and decide what you are going to focus on. This is not to say what's happening in Ukraine isn't a tragedy or that we all shouldn't be concerned, but it is to say that there are tragedies and wars raging around the world all the time that are far worse than what is happening in Ukraine today. Many are familiar with Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" which details exactly this issue. If you are obsessed with Russia's war on Ukraine and barely give a passing thought to the much more deadly and horrific Saudi/US war on Yemen you ought to consider why exactly that is.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chinathrow 5y ago
> How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine. My question was about recent events - I am not diminishing any other wars ever stated, at all. Disclosure: I am a pacifist.
jacquesm 5y ago
None of those tragedies as you call them had the direct potential to turn nuclear based on the threats of one of the parties involved.
adventured 5y ago
> How did you keep your focus on working for the last several years, while the war has been raging in Yemen? Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Yemen, with a millions displaced and starved to death - many orders of magnitude greater than the death and suffering that has taken place in Ukraine. Your entire premise is fraudulent: of course all people do not matter to all people equally the same. Family, tribe, city, state, nation, culture, ethnicity, race, class, religion. People choose to care about other people based on such qualifications as a matter of routine throughout all of history, it is normal and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. If you're in Britain and your family is in Ukraine, of course you're going to care more about what's going on in Ukraine than what is going on in Yemen. If you're second or third generation Ukrainian in the US, of course you're likely to care a lot more about what's going on in Ukraine than in Yemen. If you culturally relate to Ukrainians far more than you culturally relate to people in Yemen, of course you're going to be drawn to what's going on in Europe more than in Yemen. That's perfectly normal and entirely moral. You don't have to care about every person on the planet equally, and any claim to the contrary is espousing not only an immoral philosophy but an impossible one: you couldn't follow such a value system even if you tried. Such an impossible value system is only built to drown people in guilt and control, it serves no other purpose.

monkeybutton 5y ago

Find somewhere public to work. Its a lot harder to sit unproductively doomscrolling while sitting in a café with other people around. Its not as productive as a regular day at home but its better than nothing. At least for me anyways.

brianmcc 5y ago

You're not alone, and there's nothing wrong with that kind of response, so don't give yourself a hard time for it. These are shocking events with global ramifications as well as obviously the awful localised impact within Ukraine.

nonameiguess 5y ago

I had some issues with a sort of generalized need to frequently check updates like this in the past. Maybe a noteworthy world event, maybe just national signing day for some NCAA sport or a pro draft, an argument on some phpBB forum. Breaking it was largely a matter of not having access. I was in the Army a while and often not engaged in work where you can shift attention all that easily or safely. Then when I got out, I was doing mostly classified work from a SCIF where I had no Internet access at my primary workstation. Just having that sort of small effort barrier was enough. I lived without a constant info dump update feed scrawling through my eyeballs for many years and realized it made no difference and I did not need that. It's not that I now watch or read no news ever, but infrequently, mostly on weekends. I still kind of care about sports but not nearly as much. Hacker News is the only site I still visit where I can comment and receive feedback, but I make no effort whatsoever to see if anyone has replied to try and reply back. If you find you can't do it through sheer willpower alone, there are plenty of ways to more or less simulate an airgap. Various browser extensions can block sites during work hours. If you find yourself turning it off all the time, you can make it harder on yourself by keeping a set of firewall rules at your router or DNS rules at a filtering provider that takes more than a click or two to turn off. If you're using company issued workstations from an office and they don't block the sites you find yourself wasting time on and don't allow you to install extensions or configure your own DNS, those won't work. A less drastic possibility is listening to news via radio as a constant background noise type of thing, or possibly even a television feed. At least that way you can still work while receiving updates. It should be less addictive since it's non-interactive and the feed is not algorithmically curated to be maximally addictive to you personally.

chinathrow 5y ago
> If you find yourself turning it off all the time, you can make it harder on yourself by keeping a set of firewall rules at your router or DNS rules at a filtering provider that takes more than a click or two to turn off. I tried that wiht my hosts file (/etc/hosts) and failed since it's a password and a comment character to enable the site back on. I do not control the firewall on the WiFi where I have my work setup.

adventured 5y ago

I just haven't been trying too hard on the work side. It's not that important. I knowingly allow my focus to regularly break, I don't care about that. I have friends in Ukraine and I'm glued to the news. I check it constantly.

colechristensen 5y ago

Why? Wars go on every day, people suffer every day, it doesn't benefit you or them to obsessively watch. I'd get it for people who live in or have close connections with the affected area, but knowing every update when you're on the other side of the world? What's the benefit? Keeping up with the general situation, sure, but up to the minute all day watching... I don't get the point or the motivation besides which is ultimately entertainment, and not good entertainment. Don't you get bored with news sources? CNN just repeats itself all day.

CodeGlitch 5y ago
How many wars involve the possibility of WW3 or nuclear engagements? This ones a bit different.

flyinglizard 5y ago

You stop exposing yourself to news which most likely won’t affect you in any way, and you remember that if everyone stopped doing what they do and just sat there scared of Putin, it’d be his victory anyway.

MrDresden 5y ago

Seeing the Ukranians on my team log in for work (even though they have been told there is no expectation to do so given the situation, but saying they do so for the distraction it offers them) simply emboldens my already considerable respect for them. If they can work from within an active war zone (Kyiv) I can do so from the comfort of my northern european couch.

Swizec 5y ago

As an eastern(-ish) European[1] with fuzzy memories of experiencing a small war as a ~4 year old kid, this has been extremely hard to watch. Even though I live in USA now, I don’t remember ever being this affected by a news cycle. Wednesday evening when the news of totally-not-invasion first broke was tough. Thursday was basically a write off. Friday was luckily so busy I didn’t have time for interneting. Ultimately what worked was to remind myself all this is outside the sphere of my influence, there’s nothing actionable I can do, and following minute-by-minute news is just giving someone else free reign of my mind. Don’t need people’s hot takes and armchair analysis. A daily balanced report from a proper journalist outfit is enough. edit: What has also helped was deciding early on that should this go beyond Ukraine into the rest of Europe, I’m flying my family out immediately. There’s only 918 miles by road between Kyiv and where my family lives. Making that decision in advance and with clear pull-the-trigger criteria makes it easier to stop stressing. [^1] Slovenia

zwkrt 5y ago

News of international affairs has never caused me to solve a problem or reduce an anxiety in my own life or the life of thiose around me (quite the opposite), so I do not give it much weight in my mind. Throughout the pandemic there have been genocidal actions in Ethiopia and China, Duterte in the Philippines has made an incredible number of “extrajudicial killings” and brought total tyranny on the populace, and I’m sure there have been many other atrocities of which I am unaware. I might question why you are giving so much mental weight to this conflict. I understand nukes are involved via Russia’s involvement, but this isn’t Russia’s only military action in the last number of years. Could it be that you have been primed to take this particular conflict Very Seriously by a news media which regularly downplays conflicts with more casualties and cultural significance?

time_to_smile 5y ago

Industrial civilization is already in a state of collapse, plenty of people on HN have done a great job doubling down on the "this is fine", but even prior to the Ukraine invasion, it was hard to put your head down an work for brighter future you know doesn't exist. The immediacy of the war in Ukraine is just harder for most people to ignore. But just today we got another update from the IPCC [0] confirming what many people paying attention have already known: “Any further delay in concerted global action will miss a brief and rapidly closing window to secure a liveable future.” Key phrase there being liveable future Most people on HN don't believe climate change will be that bad, but for those paying attention we're already on a ticking clock. In 2014 I saw all of this, 2020 onward being progressively worse was something I knew was inevitable. End of the day you realize that you have to eat, pay rent, etc. so you have to work. Tech workers have had a really great luxury of possibly enjoying or even loving their day job, but that's not why people have to work. We've always lived in a kafkaesque world, tech workers have just been shielded from it. The only advice is to try to cut out the news and twitter a bit. It's mostly disinformation on there anyway, nobody really knows exactly what's happening and plenty of people have an agenda to push. Spend so more time consuming "slow" media. Read a novel, some philosophy, or just spend time listening to music. The world will be getting increasingly stressful over the years, it's a good idea to start figuring out how you are going to life in a world of loss. 0. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/ipcc-issues-bleakest-warning-yet-impacts-climate-breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/28/ipcc-iss...

hprotagonist 5y ago

Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

cellis 5y ago

Something that I’ve recently started doing is pomodoros of 25 minutes with 5 minute breaks. Finding discipline to just do real work is difficult if your work isn’t well specified beforehand. So I use a few tools for this: * pen/pencil and mini wire bound notebooks. I tried using Apple notes but the phone is a source of endless distraction. I write down goals for the day, headlined by project name. When I’m done I cross them out. * befocusedpro app for pomodoros It has a pretty nice way to setup pomodoro tasks and isn’t trying to be much more than a pomodoro app. My employer uses Jira and my side projects use Trello or Apple notes. It sits on the mac menu bar and beeps when both the pomodoro and break are up. During breaks sometimes I respond to text messages or take a quick walk around but you could read news too. I write down about 5 “goals” and try to get them all done * streaks app iOS This is like GitHub history for habits. After every befocusedpro pomodoro I check the streak for e.g. ( employer pomodoro ) or ( side project pomodoro ) Finally, I put my phone in do not disturb pretty much the whole time I’m trying to accomplish my pomodoros and the only exceptions are my significant other and mom / sister. That’s it!

johncoltrane 5y ago

FYI, the war in Ukraine has been ongoing since 2014. You care more about the current developments because the media you follow care more about it. Unless you live in the region, there is nothing you can do about it and it is unlikely to have any effect on your day-to-day life, so turn off the news and focus on things you actually have leverage on. Me? I never cared about that war and I still don't, just like I don't care about any of the currently ongoing wars (Yemen, Syria, whatever). Not following the news makes life generally less unpleasant.

happynacho 5y ago

I ignore it. It isn't that hard.

sharken 5y ago

Not being Ukrainian makes it somewhat easier i think, but it's still a very troubling situation. Hopefully there are some sensible Russians who will prevent Putin from running amok. My routine consists of checking Hacker News, CNN and local media with the purpose of checking up on any new developments. One rule i try to live by is no commenting while at work. And while there is no sympathy at all for Putin, i have no problems with the Russian people, they are still very much welcome.

kaeken 5y ago

I'm treating parsing the news as an exercise in recognizing disinformation instead of just watching in horror. There's so many parties between what's actually happening and my news feed that I feel there's guaranteed to be genuine war-time propaganda showing up. I want to build the muscle required to recognize that stuff so that when the same tactics are used by/against my country later in life, I'll be practiced at calling it out. That Ghost of Kyiv story? Immediately called the clip BS since it's like Propaganda 101. Turns out the video on my timeline was from a video game. Approaching my news feed as a hostile reader takes enough effort/energy that I genuinely just get tired and put it down to do something else.

sfusato 5y ago

I limit my news intake to just the Wikipedia's "Current events" portal page [1] which provides just the right amount of worldwide current events. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events

wooque 5y ago

add this to your hosts file 0.0.0.0 twitter.com